NASA Hosts News and Social Media Events Around This Week's Asteroid Pass

NASA is inviting members of the media and public to participate in online and television events May 30-31 with NASA officials and experts discussing the agency's asteroid initiative and the Earth flyby of the 1.7-mile-long asteroid 1998 QE2.

At 4:59 p.m. EDT, Friday, May 31, 1998 QE2 will pass by Earth at a safe distance of about 3.6 million miles -- its closest approach for at least the next two centuries. The asteroid was discovered Aug. 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program near Socorro, N.M.

The schedule of events is:

Thursday, May 30

-- 1:30-2:30 p.m.: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., will show on NASA Television live telescope images of the asteroid and host a discussion with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and experts from JPL and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. Scientists at Goldstone will be using radar to track and image the asteroid.

-- 2-3 p.m., NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will participate in a White House "We the Geeks" Google+ Hangout. Participants will discuss asteroid identification, characterization, resource utilization, and hazard mitigation. The hangout can be viewed at the White House website at: https://plus.google.com/+whitehouse/posts

NASA recently announced plans to find, study, capture and relocate an asteroid for exploration by astronauts. The asteroid initiative is a strategy to leverage human and robotic activities for the first human mission while accelerating efforts to improve detection and characterization of asteroids.